Is a test method isolated from effects of other test methods

Question

Suppose I have test class TestClassName with two test methods:

@isTest
private class TestClassName {
    static testMethod void testMethodName() {
         // DML to insert data 
    }
    static testMethod void testMethodName() {
        // is inserted data available here?
    }
}

In other words, are all test methods isolated — as if a complete tearDown was performed after the execution of each test method?

Answer 1

Crap, I've misread the question! Yes, they're isolated!

---

There are no equivalents of jUnit's setUp and tearDown but each method is independent of other methods. If you need setUp, you have to write it yourself - create a small private static void prepareTestData() with all your DML and explicitly call it at the beginning of your test methods.

Actually it might be marked as public - will save you time if you can reference them from other test classes. It's still within a test class so it's unaccessible from regular code and does not count towards Apex storage usage.

There used to work a neat trick that would let you have some kind of "initialization block":

@isTest
private class TestClassName {
    private static Acount testAccount;

    static {
       testAccount = new Account(Name = 'science, baby');
       insert testAccount;
    }

    static testMethod void testMethodName() {
    }
    static testMethod void testMethodName() {
    }
}

This doesn't work anymore :( If you have only 1 test method it should work, but each subsequent one will not see the data crated in this static block.